Meta announces Orion, its first fully functional AR glasses prototype
At Meta Connect 2024, Mark Zuckerberg gave us a first look at Meta’s first fully-functional holographic AR glasses prototype, codenamed Orion. And they look pretty darn cool.
As the final point of his presentation, in which he also introduced us to the Meta Quest 3S, new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses features, and Meta AI updates including voice, Zuckerberg gave us our first look at his company’s AR eyewear efforts. The culmination of what he says is more than a decade of work.
Even in this prototype stage, Orion looks pretty impressive. These glasses behave exactly as you’d expect, and can provide a virtual overlay to augment what you see in the real world; this includes highlighting certain objects, video chatting with the real-world persona of another person, and browsing the web.
And all of this has specs that look pretty normal and are lightweight, weighing less than 100 grams. However, Zuckerberg himself admitted that the design is not final yet, because they are not as fashionable as he would like (and I am the first to admit that fashion is essential for technological wearables).
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While you and I may not get our hands on Orion unless we’re lucky enough to try a demo of it (Meta, please let me know), some developers will apparently be getting a pair of Orion glasses as a dev kit. Zuckerberg explained that this should give them enough time to create exciting AR experiences in time for the consumer version.
When that launch will happen, however, is anyone’s guess. Zuckerberg hasn’t given any time frame for when a publicly available version of Orion will launch. A leaked internal roadmap from The Edge In early 2023, 2027 was suggested as a launch year, and that certainly makes sense, but I personally fervently hope they come much sooner.